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20 CHAPTER 1 ■ Social Marketing for Public Health: An Introduction

Step 3: Select Target Audiences
A target audience is quite like the bull’s-eye; it is selected through segmentation, a
process to divide a broad audience (population) into homogeneous subaudiences
(groups), called audience segments. An audience segment is identified and aggre-
gated by the shared characteristics and needs of the people in a broad audience, in-
cluding similar demographics, psychographics, geographics, behaviors, social
networks, community assets, and stage of change.
It is ideal that a social marketing campaign focuses on one primary target au-
dience, but secondary audiences are often identified, based on the marketing prob-
lem, purpose, and focus of the campaign defined earlier. An estimated size and
informative description of the target audience(s) is needed at this step. An ideal de-
scription of the target audience will make you believe that if a member of the audi-
ence walked into the room, you would “recognize” her or him.

Step 4: Set Marketing Objectives and Goals

A social marketing campaign needs clear marketing objectives and goals. Specifying
desired behaviors and changes in knowledge, attitudes, and/or beliefs, marketing ob-
jectives always includes a behavior objective—something you want the target audi-
ence to do as a result of the campaign (e.g., to choose healthy foods and/or
beverages available at vending machines). Marketing objectives also often include a
knowledge objective, which makes clear the information or facts that the target audi-
ence needs to be aware of through the campaign (e.g., to know what a healthy
lifestyle is and what advantages it has), and a belief objective, which relates to the
things the target audience needs to believe in order to “change its mind” (e.g., to be-
lieve that a healthy lifestyle can be achieved through simple everyday actions).
A social marketing campaign also needs to establish quantifiable measures,
called marketing goals, relevant to the marketing objectives. Marketing goals, re-
sponding to behavior objectives, knowledge objectives, and belief objectives should
be ideally SMART—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound
(Haughey, n.d.) in terms of knowledge, attitudes, and behavior changes. What is
determined here will have strong implications for budgets, will guide marketing
mix strategies, and will direct evaluation measures in the later planning process in
a social marketing campaign.

Step 5: Identify Factors Influencing Behavior Adoption

Before positioning your social marketing campaign and establishing the mar-
keting mix strategies for the campaign, the social marketer needs to take the